Friday 22 June 2012

Alfred E. Newman regrets ...

Did you spot the deliberate mistake of the month - well, and yes, I have been away, on holiday, since you are kind enough to ask. But just checking if anyone is reading this stuff! I hope I've corrected it now before anyone has seen it (I'm pretty confident about that) but will the first version be there for years?
Of course, I meant to write that 'worry' has for many years, perhaps two hundred, generally been said (by RP speakers, I should say) with an uh sound as in BrE 'cut' ie wurry. Now there seems to be a lot of spelling pronunciation about, so with an o sound, as in BrE 'not'. Any comments? Americans don't do either, anyway, I understand, but use a schwa sound.

2 comments:

  1. I tend not to worry when the altered pronunciation is relatively slight, like this. After all, we get lots of variations of speaking simply because of where we're born.

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  2. Quite but I'm thinking of RP speakers whose accent doesn't usually give clues about where they were born.

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